Common Topics

Recent Articles

Sony has admitted that it’s powerless to fix display problems on the PlayStation Portable 3000, which gamers have complained displays strange lines on its screen.

Scan lines appear on the PSP 3000's screen (left) but not on the PSP 2000's screen
Images courtesy of Gaming Bits

“On some occasions, scan lines may appear on scenes where brightness changes drastically, due to the hardware features of the new LCD device on PSP-3000,” Sony told PSP FanBoy.

One gamer posted a message on the PlayStation message board that his PSP-3000 “now has what look like scan lines that were not visible on PSPs before”. He went on to describe how “there are very visible interlacing issues” and stated that he’s not very happy with his new machine.

Another gamer said: “Now all the older PSP games will look like crap” on the PSP-3000. “The new screen looks terrible compared with the 2000,” he added.

Sony's said it can't fix the problem

When Sony launched the PSP 3000 back in August, the firm stated that the 4.3in, 480 x 272, 16:9 ratio LCD screen would allow gamers to see brighter colours and a better-defined on-screen image in natural light.

However, Sony's since added that “scan lines have come out to be more visible as a result of improving response time to alleviate the after images on PSP-3000”. The bad news for gamers, according to the firm, is that because this problem is due to the console's “hardware specification”, Sony has no plans for a system software update to fix it.

Just last month, Sony admitted that the PSP-3000’s brighter and richer display resulted in a shorter battery life for the console.